25th August 2016 1:00
By Blue Tutors
There have been a number of major changes to how school teach and exams assess GCSEs since 2010, meaning any comparison with previous years doesn’t truly reflect what is going on. Overall, it is true, there has been a 2.1% decrease in the number of A*-C grades this year across the board. This is the largest drop since their conception in 1980 but the results are more region and subject specific than ever. While results in England saw a 2.2% fall, results in Wales remained roughly equal, with an increase in A* grades, and Northern Ireland’s pass rate actually increased slightly. This is thought to be as a result of the new policy in England forcing 17 year olds who did not pass their GCSE English and Maths the previous year to retake, increasing the number of students likely to miss out on a C grade in those subjects. English was in fact the subject with the biggest fall with a 5.2%. Yet the number of 16 year olds with a passing mark in English still fell by 1.3%, attributed to the new Ofqual comparable outcomes technique, which pegs a cohort’s outcomes to their performance at Key Stage 2 (primary). This year’s cohort underperformed in English at that stage so a drop in results was to be expected.
Another factor affecting this year’s results are the policy changes around how performance is measured. From this year, only the first sitting of an exam counts towards a school’s performance statistics. This has produced a fourfold reduction in the number of students sitting GCSEs a year early. The introduction of the EBacc performance measure, emphasising the importance of “core subjects”, has pressured schools into steering students away from arts subjects to this history and geography, whose results were also down this year. This, along with a large number of “middle performing” students choosing to move to alternative qualifications, has brought down the number of A-C grades.
While the number of students sitting maths and English is, understandably, up this year, modern languages continue to fall in popularity. The number of students studying French has more than halved in 20 years; some attribute this in part to the rising popularity of other languages such as Spanish, but schools and the National Union of Teachers blame increasing difficulty in finding and retaining qualified language teachers. Subject choice can be critical to success, with the gender gap at an all-time high and extremely very subject specific this year. As expected, girls outperformed boys with 8.9% more girls getting a C than boys. This gap was most pronounced in media as well as design and technology with an almost 20% gap in pass rate. The difference in maths and science, however, is quite small. This difference is seen worldwide and is attributed to increased maturity of girls at this age. The trend reverses by A-level, with no significant gender gap, possibly helped by the narrower subject range.
More unpredictability is to be expected in the coming years with significant changes in the way GCSEs are assessed coming into effect next year. The new marking system, from 1 to 9 instead of letter grades will be phased in, and is reputed to be more challenging, yielding fewer top marks. Also, schools will begin to be assessed using the new Progress 8 system, measuring students’ progress through secondary school as opposed to the final mark itself without context. These, as well as the many other education policy changes brought in by the conservative government over the past six years to target grade inflation appear to be working. GCSE overall marks are now back to their 2008 level, after a steady increase over many years that many in the education sector admit is not due to improved quality of teaching, but an increasing willingness and ability of schools to manipulate the system in order to improve their standing in league tables. The aim of the new system is to produce a rigorous qualification and genuinely improve teaching standards.